I slept in. I made some pork chops with some amazing fruit I picked up Saturday at the Palm Springs Certified Farmers’ Market. I took a lovely, mask-on walk through downtown Palm Springs. I had drinks—socially distanced—with friends in a backyard. So, all in all, it was pretty good.

Well, except for the parts when I watched members of our community pointlessly tear each other to shreds on Facebook.

Look … I get it: We’re all facing down a series of interconnected threats that are truly life or death matters: The virus, the effects of the lockdown, livelihoods, etc. This is serious shit.

But … does going on social media and attacking each other really do anyone any good?

I personally find the reopening process to be scary and exciting and disturbing and wonderful all at once. I am scared that it may be happening too soon. I am excited to see out-of-work friends getting their jobs back. I find it disturbing to see pictures of throngs of people in close proximity without masks. I find it wonderful to drive through parts of our valley and see life again.

I’ve never had such mixed feelings before about anything. Really. I suspect a lot of you feel the same way.

Regardless: It would behoove us all to remember that, save a few psychopaths and ne’er-do-wells, all of us are on the same team. We all want to be able to get together again. We all want jobs and stores and concerts and gatherings back. All of us want the same things.

When we forget that we are on the same team and want the same things … well, not only are the resulting attacks causing angst and doing nobody any good; they’re playing right into the hands of the people who want to see us fail. According to Business Insider:

As parts of the U.S. have lifted shutdown orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, there's been a fierce argument online about the risks and benefits of reopening. New research suggests that bots have been dominating that debate.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers analyzed over 200 million tweets discussing COVID-19 and related issues since January and found that roughly half the accounts — including 62% of the 1,000 most influential retweeters—appeared to be bots, they said in a report published this week.

Wash your hands. Wear a mask. And be kind. Please. We really are on the same team here.

That’s enough for today. Join me, please, in a toast to the brave men and women who have died fighting for this country. Be safe. Wear a mask. If you can spare a buck or two to support fine local journalism like Matt’s museums piece, Kevin’s cocktail-shrub primer and this Daily Digest, please consider becoming a Supporter of the Independent. Oh, and one last thing: Please be kind! We’ll be back tomorrow.

The coronavirus has made a lot of people realize they’ve been living life with a gross underappreciation for human connection—including the ability to go to a museum and learn with others.

So … how do museums serve the public when people can’t physically connect?

We recently spoke to representatives of the Children’s Discovery Museum of the Desert, the Coachella Valley History Museum and the Palm Springs Art Museum about how they are each handling the closure—and what attendees can expect when they finally reopen.

The Children’s Discovery Museum of the Desert wanted to keep reaching people during the shutdown—so it implemented a new online learning program called “Discover at Home,” which can be accessed via the museum’s website, cdmod.org.

“Not having visitors anymore, we wanted to continue being a valuable community resource for children and families, especially now during these uncertain times,” said Gregoria Rodriguez, chief programs and exhibits officer at CDMOD. “We created this series, and everything is offered completely virtually. It’s on our website and social-media platforms, and now on YouTube at CDMOD. The series offers everything from conversation starters, to story times, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) lessons, cooking—and we even brought back our toddler program. We offer toddler programs year-round at the museum, and this is the first time we are offering it at no charge to the families, as well as all of the other programs.”

The museum is posting a weekly “Conversation Starter” on Mondays. One example: If you had 1 million marshmallows, what would you build?

“They are simple questions for the families that they can talk about together, and get their creative juices flowing and ready for the rest of the programs during the week,” Rodriguez said. “The rest of the curriculum is the stuff we do normally at the museum. I’m hoping that families new to the museum or families who knew about us and have forgotten can see what we do year-round—and when we reopen our doors, will be coming in to participate in person.”

The museum’s weekly video series—a new one is uploaded every Wednesday morning—does a great job of emulating what one may learn from a day of visiting the museum.

“The videos are a collaboration of myself doing the story times; and Ashley (Whitley), our makerspace and art coordinator, doing some arts and crafts activities,” Rodriguez said. “Kory (Lloyd), our early childhood-education coordinator, does a lot of the toddler classes. We provide a walk-through video, just in case the written-out steps we provide aren’t clear enough.

“We didn’t want to provide Zoom classes right now, so as to not interfere with some families who have just started distance learning and may be having to share a computer.”

The idea of an online museum had been on the minds of some at the CDMOD prior to the outbreak, Rodriguez said.

“We’ve been getting really great feedback, and this has been something we have wanted to do anyway,” Rodriguez said. “This was really the push that we needed to go online and reach more families this way. I don’t anticipate our online presence ending at all, because I’m still not really sure how people are going to react when everything’s open. I hope they aren’t hesitant to come in, because we are amping up our sanitary procedures—but if they are, we will still have the online lessons available.

“We’re so interactive, and we really encourage hands-on play and exploration. We want to ensure that families feel safe when they come back to the museum.”

All of the programming is being offered for free—and Rodriguez said she hopes the museum can rely on families and donors to continue to preserve this community asset.

“Even though we are offering everything for free, we do appreciate donations,” Rodriguez said. “We normally rely on admissions, memberships, birthday parties, field trips, camps, etcetera. … The museum has been a part of the community for over 30 years. We have some people on our staff who were museum children, came back with their kids to visit, and are now on our staff. To see that we are so involved with people’s lives and the community—we just can’t wait to get these doors open again.”

Carol Scott, the chief executive officer/executive director of CDMOD, talked about how the closure has caused a serious financial strain.

“We have really made an effort in the last few years to bring back new life into the museum,” Scott said. “After 20 years, things can get pretty stale. Last year, our attendance was almost 85,000. The museum doesn’t have a huge donor base, so we have really worked on getting our revenue up. Our budget is about 85 percent earned revenue—attendance, memberships and people walking through the door. This (closure) is really hurtful for us, because we’re so dependent on earned revenue. We’ve been working on donations, writing grants, etcetera.”

The fact that the pandemic hit in mid-March—the height of the busy season—was especially painful, Scott said.

“Many businesses in the valley rely on the extra income that comes in during the season,” Scott said. “We lost that time, and that usually is what helps us through the slow seasons. Our two major fundraisers, which happen in March and May, could not happen. When do the locusts fly in?

“We’re here to serve the community; we just need to stay afloat so we can do that. We’re doing the best we can at researching how other organizations and museums are addressing the issue. Nonprofits like us have an extra burden—because we’re dependent on fundraising, and it’s a hard time to ask people for money.”

As for reopening, children’s museums face a significant challenge, as they rely on direct interaction—unlike, say, art museums.

“The reason a children’s museum exists is to provide informal learning that is away from technology,” Scott said. “You want kids to be doing things hands-on, creating and interacting with real things. That’s the value proposition of children’s museums across the country—so now we’re all having to redefine that value. The children’s museum (concept) has been around for over 100 years, and has really focused on being the alternative learning space to what goes on in the classroom. As the classroom has to redefine their delivery, we have to redefine what we’re doing.

“When museums do start to reopen, we will have to drastically change our delivery, because we are very much an active, play-learning environment. All of the new sanitary requirements will have to be adhered to strictly, as now there’s the fear of children having secondary infections. We are really looking at all of the consequences of this, both intended and unintended, and determining how to continue to be a valuable community asset.”

Scott understands that families may be hesitant to return to the physical museum at first, but said she and her staff have always made sanitation and safety a top priority.

“The beauty of a children’s museum is that it is seen as a very safe place for family play and learning, and we are working to continue that perception going,” she said. “We are very picky when it comes to cleaning the exhibits, and we are looking at other museums when they start to reopen to see what will work best.

“We will border upon being incredibly picky and cautious—as I take the job of protecting children very seriously.”

Gloria Franz, the second vice president of the Coachella Valley History Museum’s board of directors (cvhm.org), said the Indio museum—dedicated to “preserving and sharing the history of the Coachella Valley”—will not rush to reopen its doors.

“We are working on cleaning and organizing our archives and also trying to do a lighting and fans project for the blacksmith shop,” Franz said. “Most of our volunteers are seniors, so they’re on lockdown. Our one staff member comes in three days a week to check the campus, return calls, pick up the mail and pay bills.

“We’re just getting the exhibits ready for when we reopen—and we’ve decided, as a board, not to reopen until Oct. 1, because in the summer, we’re kind of quiet anyway. We’re trying to prepare for a deep cleaning prior to opening, so that everybody can be assured that we’ve cleaned as much as we can, and that we can make it as safe as we can for our guests and our volunteers.”

While the stay-at-home order has meant that the museum had to halt at least one large project, Franz said she’s hopeful the closure won’t be too damaging to the museum’s finances.

“We have a 15,000-square-foot piece of land that’s still empty on our campus that we’ve designed as a community drought-tolerant garden,” Franz said. “We also are designing an outdoor railway exhibit, and bringing in an older Southern Pacific Railroad dining car that used to come through the Coachella Valley. So as soon as things open up, we’re going to go full force back into that project so we’ll have something new to offer.

“Our annual fundraiser isn’t until November, so we’re hoping that by November, we can still have our fundraiser—because it would put a little dent in our operation if it didn’t happen.”

Franz and her team are saddened that the virus has affected events that were planned at the museum.

“We get donations just here and there—for example, we have a family that supports our rose garden, and we also have reserves for all the basic costs,” Franz said. “Because our staff is so lean, we don’t have a huge overhead, and the city has been very supportive in handling our utilities, gardeners and any major repairs, because the city actually owns the property. What hurt us was that we had been working really hard for the last five or six years to make the campus become an events venue for weddings, retirement parties, quinceañeras and everything else. We were just starting to pick up momentum on that—and we’ve had to lose all of that progress. We have some events scheduled in the fall, so we’re hoping that that’ll continue.

“We want people to know that our venue is available for private events. It’s actually a gorgeous campus—so when you have a wedding there, the photos are just spectacular. We had a teacher get married in the school house and she loved it. It was just perfect.”

While other museums have pivoted toward an online experience, Franz said such a thing would not be a fit for the Coachella Valley History Museum.

“If we did a video on the school house, it’s not the same as stepping into the building,” she said. “To me, museums allow you to experience something in a way that a photo or a video just can’t give you. I think things will return to people wanting to know the history and what has made the valley what it is—and that’s what we provide.

“I’m not worried that this is going to change everything permanently. I think for the next six months to a year, it’s going to be slow, even when we do reopen—but we’ll be careful. We clean all the time, and we’re planning now to have enough disinfectant to be able to wipe everything down every single time somebody comes through. We’re working to make sure that we’re prepared to clean in the best way we can for our volunteers and our guests.

“We do work on donations, so we’d love to have people become members. Join our email list and like us on Facebook, and just kind of see what’s happening. We had quite a few things lined up for the spring that didn’t happen, such as a mole-tasting which was going to connect to our exhibit about Mexican art. Everything’s online if anybody needs anything, and they can also just email the office, and we’ll get it to the right person.”

Louis Grachos, the chief executive officer and executive director of the Palm Springs Art Museum, said closing the downtown Palm Springs museum, its Palm Desert satellite location and its Architecture and Design Center was in and of itself a challenging task.

“We shut down on the 12th of March, based on the recommendations from the governor,” Grachos said. “We were literally in the middle of our season, as January, February and March are the most active periods. There was a lot happening, and it took a lot of coordination to officially close the museum and figure out how to resolve all the issues regarding staff and furloughing.”

Grachos said the museum will not rush to reopen—and instead is taking things one day at a time.

“We are keeping tabs on what the governor is advising on a daily basis,” he said. “We are trying to form a strategy as to when we do get to reopen—what will things look like? We are going to have to understand how to manage visitors, respect mask laws and social distancing, and remove any opportunity that would entice people to congregate, such as the labels and introductory panels for exhibitions.”

Grachos said it’s likely the museum will stay closed until the fall—and that he had an epiphany, of sorts, during a recent visit to the Palm Springs Certified Farmers’ Market.

“They have to accommodate distancing for people waiting in line,” Grachos said. “The amount of physical space and the wrap-around was pretty remarkable, and I started to envision what that could look like at our museum. It’s pretty daunting, because we’d need to have people stretched out to the sidewalk, which would require some tenting. It’s going to be a logistical challenge.

“Safety is a huge priority, and I believe that will determine when we actually get to reopen. We are hoping to reopen sometime in fall, but ‘reopening’ is going to mean something different—limited days, limited hours, etcetera. It’s our hope that the community will want to visit museums in the same way they’ll want to go to the park. The consensus between me and other colleagues, from The Broad in Los Angeles to the MoMA in New York, is that we are expecting about one-third of our usual audience when we open doors again, and it will probably be that way for the next two years.”

Grachos said the idea of how museums operate will need to be rethought completely.

“In my generation, there was a big emphasis on museums becoming cultural gathering places,” he said. “The concept was to create a social environment with experiential encounters. We’re really committed to that notion of museums being a cultural hub—and that is something that museum culture is going to have to rethink. The last 20 years have seen museums incorporating interactive designs that have enriched learning experiences. Observing distancing and the careful mediation of the number of people entering will shift museum programming.

“I won’t have a discussion with an artist and 25 people walking through the gallery anymore.”

Grachos said the Palm Springs Art Museum has been harmed by the economic collapse that has affected us all.

“The day the doors closed is the day revenue stopped coming in,” he said. “We’re relying on our traditional support base, but the stop of revenue is going to have a major impact on our museum. We are now going to have to downscale and streamline our organization, ask a smaller staff to take on more responsibilities, and rethink programming, cost-wise. We were going through a phase of being more resourceful with our permanent collection, including less tours and more investigation in growing and showcasing shows of our permanent collection. I see the Palm Springs Art Museum as being a great asset for the community in terms of exposure and education. We have to find a way to maintain a strengthened profile in the community to ride through this period.

“Those who love supporting art and culture do so on discretionary funds and confidence in the market. People who are very generous to cultural institutions are now a little more careful with their philanthropy, because of the stock market and economic impact of the virus. Frankly, we’re preparing for less support. People who support our museum also support other museums, so it’s going to make it very difficult for all museums to rely on philanthropy. The city’s funding support is also going to be challenged because of the lack of revenue. We are not going to be able to rely on the government to support us, either, outside of the Payroll Protection Plan. I’m bracing myself for a tough few years.”

The Palm Springs Art Museum is boosted its online outreach via its Palm Springs Art Museum at Home offerings (www.psmuseum.org/at-home).

“That was the brainchild of our terrific curatorial team, Rochelle Steiner, and our educator, who pulled together a wonderful way to keep our audience, our community and our educators engaged,” Grachos said. “We’ve been hosting art-making workshops on Fridays, and parents have been enjoying including it as an added activity for their kids.

“We also have been having online exhibitions. We’ve focused on Stephen Willard, and our great archiving collection, and we’ve focused on the Sarkowsky sculpture park in Palm Desert. These online exhibitions have been getting a lot of good attention, and reminds our audience that we have this great resource. Rochelle is also working on spotlighting parts of our collection, which will also reveal, both locally and nationally, how varied our collection is.

“It’s been an important deal for us to stay connected to the community, and I’m very pleased to say we’ve had a great response. Sometimes a crisis helps you create a different way to keep communicating.”

It covers all sorts of stuff I’ve already covered in this space (our coloring book, our Facebook grant, etc.), but if you want a recap of how things are going with your local independent newspaper, here’s a good place to start.

I’ll discuss the May print edition a little more tomorrow. But in the meantime … here are today’s links:

• The big news of the day: Preliminary study results now show that Gilead Sciences’ drug remdesivir can help a statistically significant number of people battling COVID-19. Dr. Anthony Fauci said this is a big deal—because it shows drugs can indeed fight this thing.

• I found this piece 1) gross, 2) fascinating and 3) oddly reassuring: Wanna know how scientists are watching for signs of an uptick in coronavirus infections? By studying sewage.

• This is evil and awful: You know how some states are starting the reopening process—even though the vast majority of the experts say that’s a terrible, terrible idea? Well, one “benefit” for the states is it forces people to go back to work—and gets them off of unemployment. But what if you work at a business that’s reopening, and you feel that it’s unsafe to go back? Well, in Iowa, at least, you have no choice.

Well, that kind of confusion is happening with all sorts of “knowledge” surrounding COVID-19—but in hyper-speed due to the worldwide urgency for answers, and then with a whole lot of social-media misinformation thrown in.

Because Steinberg didn’t touch on it, I do want to briefly examine the conflicting sources regarding the matter of the coronavirus’ arrival in California.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle published a piece from a Monterey Bay-area TV station citing a Stanford-linked study into the possibility that COVID-19 first arrived here in the fall. We linked to the story in that day’s Daily Digest. I’d re-link to the San Francisco Chronicle piece … but that link no longer works, interestingly enough. So instead, here’s a link to the piece cached on Google.

So we have three different pieces, from three generally reliable sources, published over four days, coming to decidedly different conclusions.

My point: Take whatever you read regarding the science of COVID-19 with a grain of salt … a large grain of salt, like the size of the boulder. And take solace in the fact that we will indeed get to answers eventually—because an unprecedented number of very smart people are working on this problem, and science is an amazing thing.

Last night, I met friends for drinks at a bar on Arenas Road, in downtown Palm Springs. I haven’t been out much this week, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

As we drove down Arenas, unsuccessfully looking for a spot, I was surprised to see that most of the bars appeared to be packed.

“I don’t know if I have ever had more mixed feelings about something in my life,” I told my husband.

On one hand … I was elated to see that all of these small, locally owned businesses were getting much-needed business. It was good to see the servers and bartenders making good money. I was proud to be part of that needed cash infusion.

On the other hand … I kept thinking: Should all of us be out and about like this?

After drinks, we wandered down Palm Canyon Drive and got dinner at a local restaurant. While the street wasn’t dead, it certainly was getting quieter as the night went on.

Again, mixed feelings.

After I hit send on this Daily Digest, I am going to get ready to head to CVRep in Cathedral City, to do a review of The City of Conversation—the only play currently running in the valley that has not yet been shuttered by the pandemic. (More on this below.) Then I am going to meet friends at a charity art event, and go to dinner at Lulu. I am going to savor it like it’s the last good night on the town I have for a while … because it might very well be.

“In the next 48 hours DAP will take a bold step and we ask you to please have our backs. Last week, we opened our new clinics for DAP’s day-to-day healthcare operations, leaving our original clinic temporarily vacant. Today, I worked with our infectious disease doctors to develop an emergency plan of action to ensure the health and well-being of all we serve. The original clinic will be transformed this weekend into a specialized COVID-19 triage clinic. This will allow our medical experts to screen patients demonstrating symptoms in a quarantined space, while also allowing our non-symptomatic patients to continue having their health needs met without potential exposure.

“This is no small undertaking. Desert AIDS Project is the healthcare home to 7,000 of our friends and neighbors, most of whom live at 200 percent of the federal poverty level or below. And, the majority of our patients are of an age with significantly increased risk. We already are seeing a dramatic increase in inquiries and we must be able to meet the need as it grows in the coming weeks.

“This new clinic will cost DAP $575,000 to operate over the coming months.”

Read more about all of this tomorrow in the second Installment of the Independent’s Pandemic Stories series. Yeah, I said yesterday that story would be available today … and then things changed. It’ll be worth the wait, I promise.

• All schools in Riverside County are closed for the next three weeks, per county Public Health Officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser. More info here.

• Good news: During the closure, kids in need within the Palm Springs Unified School District can still get free meals. School buses will be delivering them on normal morning routes, or they can be picked up at schools. Get the details here. Desert Sands and Coachella Valley Unified are also making meals available to kids at schools.

• The United Way of the Desert has launched a very good information page, chock full of resources and phone numbers people may need during this crisis. View it here.

• This is amazingly cool: Yesterday, we reported that the Certified Farmers’ Markets had been suspended for the time being. Today, the organizers have started posting direct contact info for the various vendors (with their blessing) on the Certified Farmers’ Market Facebook page, so people can directly contact and buy from the vendors if they so choose. Get all the 411 here.

• The Palm Springs Art Museum has decided to close for the time being. More info here.

That’s all for now. Please, support local businesses. Be a good neighbor. Stop hoarding crap. Be smart and diligent and caring. More tomorrow.

La Quinta High School has produced many creative people, including singer/actor Tyler Hilton and singer/model Aubrey O’Day. While Zach Fleming-Boyles has not yet reached their levels of fame, he has accumulated local recognition—and he has a lot of big plans for 2020.

He lives in Palm Springs with his two parakeets and works as the manager of school programs at the Palm Springs Art Museum, but in his spare time, he is a painter and musician. Using the moniker The Fat’s Sabobah—a name he claims “has no meaning” and is “search-engine optimized”—he’s been making what he calls “ambient techno” since 2003.

Fleming-Boyles played his first show in four years at Bart on Dec. 30, and he is now branching out and performing/exhibiting in new and exciting ways. He will have an exhibition at the new Tim J Leary Studios at the Backstreet Art District throughout February, with a reception at Backstreet’s First Wednesday Art Walk on Feb. 5. From noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 15, Fleming-Boyles will perform his music as The Fat’s Sabobah at the gallery; he’ll also DJ songs that inspired him.

His paintings focus on a common desert-dweller: the cactus. He has painted works as small as 4 by 5 inches, and as large as 5 by 5 feet. He works with an almost-scientific approach (always using live cacti as references), and said he paints every day after work, spending three to four weeks on each painting. Painting daily gives him a way to stay grounded in a traditional medium, he said, which enables him to experiment in other ways.

“(The cactus is) a resilient object in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet,” Fleming-Boyles said. “The fact that they thrive in this environment—I think that’s fascinating. They’re such bizarre plants, really alien-looking, which contributes to the whole surreal feeling of the desert.”

Fleming-Boyles counts Cristopher Cichocki—another desert-inspired artist, who is taking part in this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, aka Coachella—as a mentor, friend and inspiration.

“The whole neon orange I use in my paintings is inspired by his work,” Fleming-Boyles said. “He’s using all those day-glo colors, too. He’s taken his art to a more-conceptual realm than me, with how he works with the desert and how the desert influences his work. I feel I’m more of a straightforward guy who says, ‘This is a cactus.’ His work with the Salton Sea, and his installations, and all the colors are dreamlike, or more of like a nightmare scenario. It’s fascinating.

“I’m looking forward to what he does for the Coachella festival. But I’ve never been to Coachella. The city, yes, but not the festival. Crowds aren’t really my thing.”

Fleming-Boyles grew up in the desert as an only child, and his parents instilled in him a love of performance. His mother was a writer, public speaker, teacher and performer; his father was a drummer.

“I’ve always had a compulsion to make music,” he said. “It’s been second-nature for me.”

He got started in the art world by doing graphic and web design, before moving to paint.

“I think if you want to improve at something, you have to do it every day,” he said.

He did just that, graduating with a degree in art practice from the University of California at Berkeley in 2009, where he focused on painting, performance and sound art. How about his technique?

“There’s a lot of glazing, a lot of layers, building up the image one layer at a time, and letting the colors underneath shine through,” Fleming-Boyles said. “My professor once said if I was born 500 years ago, I’d fit in with the old masters and their style.”

He considers the Richard Diebenkorn, Giorgio De Chirico, René Magritte and Marcel Duchamp his biggest inspirations.

“I’m a big fan of the surrealists—and the desert is an extremely surreal place, especially growing up here,” he said. “I don’t know; maybe it’s the sun that gets to everybody and makes them a little bit weird. It’s a beautiful place. Sometimes, when you’re out there in nature, out there in the desert, it feels like there’s something out there. I don’t want to say magic, but it’s something. It’s definitely a surreal place.”

Fleming-Boyles has previously exhibited at the Coachella Valley History Museum in Indio, and at Flat Black Art Supply in Palm Desert. His paintings are currently up at RD RNNR (pronounced “roadrunner”), a new restaurant in La Quinta. He has also participated in “crowd-sourced art” in the form of an experiment: He expanded a painted dot one millimeter in size for every Instagram “like” it received. Over the course of nine days, the dot got 452 likes—meaning he concluded with a 452-millimeter dot.

“I had a lot of fun experimenting and generating social-media interactive art,” he said. “It was fun to watch people’s reactions to the dot. People were cheering it on. I learned that art should be more interactive. People respond well if they feel they are contributing to the creation of art.”

As for his music, his first band was a ska/punk project in middle school called the Jaywalking Superheroes. The drummer from that band, Jon-Paul Lapeña, introduced Fleming-Boyles to Benjamin Benitez, the singer with a Coachella-based indie-rock band called Courtesy Knave (which to this day has a cult following); he performed with the band through high school. Around the same time, he also began composing electronic music as The Fat’s Sabobah, a name he said is just a “random thing my friend said. And I thought was just a funny thing.”

He considers his music to be “ambient techno,” a term he said is oxymoronic.

“My music started very tongue-in-cheek and instrumental, but I started adding lyrics and pop sensibilities, which are a new direction,” he said. “The songs serve as a musical diary of sorts.”

Today, his setup is minimal—yet peculiar and tactile. He has a preference for analog synths and drum machines; he plays a Korg MS2000. But it works for him.

As for inspiration, he credits Björk, Animal Collective, Aphex Twin and The Postal Service as his favorite artists—and Daft Punk’s Discovery (2001) for igniting his interest in electronic music. Shortly after that album came out, he acquired a version of the digital audio workstation Fruity Loops and began making his own electronic music. In 2002-2003, he produced music for the game Flash Flash Revolution, an online Dance Dance Revolution simulator through which he made an internet friend named For Great Justice/SpookGoblin, with whom Fleming-Boyles credits for inspiring him to continue pursuing electronic music.

Today, almost 20 years later, Fleming-Boyles has just more than two hours of material. He said the reason for his infrequent performances is that he dedicates more time to painting.

“I wouldn’t even be doing electronic music if I was a better musician,” he said.

Today, he considers music as his escape from painting—and at Tim J Leary Studios, his art and music will finally intersect. This will be the first time he displays his art and performs in one space. He said he recognizes some similarities between his approach to painting and producing music.

“The way I work with color, and layering colors on top of each other, is very similar to how I layer various tones, melodies and rhythms in my electronic music,” he said. “I also consider my paintings to be ambient, passive and mostly pleasant—I would hope—and I think my music is that way, too.”

Every year, when late August rolls around, and we start the first round of Best of Coachella Valley voting, the results announcement seems so far away.

Yet … the next three months fly by—and while the time is flying, a lot of work is being done.

Primary, that work is being done by you, the amazing readers of the Independent. To start, you tackle that first-round ballot—including almost 130 categories and NO pre-selected finalists, just a blank field to fill in next to each category.

After that goes on for several weeks, we here at the Independent get to work, and we tabulate all those first-round ballots to determine who you picked as our finalists. Then, in late September comes the announcement of each category’s three to six finalists (five in most cases)—and the start of the final round of voting. After four weeks of that, we here at the Independent check the results and begin putting together our special Best of Coachella Valley print edition, as well as this online version.

We say it every year, but it’s worth repeating: Man, you readers are good. Yeah, other publications and websites here in the Coachella Valley do readers’ polls—but the slate of winners and finalists you Independent readers come up with is so much better than the rest, partially because of how we do our polling (i.e., asking readers to vote just once in each round, to lessen the ballot-box-stuffing), but mostly because you, our readers, are smart and community-minded. This is a fantastically diverse, valley-wide selection of finalists and winners.

So, please join us to celebrate at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 18, at Copa Nightclub—again your selection this year as Best Nightclub—at 244 E. Amado Road, in Palm Springs, for the Best of Coachella Valley Awards Party. All of the winners present will receive certificates and have an opportunity to say thanks. Plus, we may have several surprises in store for everyone. I hope to see you there.

Congratulations to all of the winners and finalists … and welcome to the Best of Coachella Valley 2019-2020!

—Jimmy Boegle, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Artists Council is now fully independent from the Palm Springs Arts Museum—and its inaugural exhibition as an independent organization, rather appropriately, is based on the theme Metamorphosis.

The exhibition and sale will be celebrated with a catered opening-night reception on Thursday, March 28, from 6 to 8 p.m., and will be on display at the Artists Council’s new home—the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert—through Friday, April 12. The exhibition is free and open to the public, as is the opening-night reception, at which attendees will be able to meet the artists and vote for the People’s Choice Award.

For 50 years, the Artists Council was a part of the Palm Springs Art Museum. On Jan. 1, the Artists Council became a fully independent nonprofit organization. Its mission is to promote the art and artists of the Coachella Valley.

Metamorphosis was chosen as the first exhibit’s title by the new board of directors.

“We chose this theme for our inaugural event because it mirrors the process by which our new Artists Council is developing,” said exhibition chair Tony Radcliffe in a written statement. “Our goal is to demonstrate the high quality of artistic achievement by AC members and to bring a new audience to see their work in the beautiful art museum known as the Galen. This is also an opportunity for the public to visit (the Palm Springs Art Museum) in Palm Desert. All of the artwork is for sale, with proceeds split between the artists and the new Artists Council.”

I spoke with Radcliffe by phone about how the transition was going, as well as the Artists Council’s new home at the Galen, the Metamorphosis show, and the future vision for the Artists Council.

“Since becoming independent in January, there seems to be more energy, and it’s an exciting time for us,” he said. “The hardest part, the dirty work, was creating a new nonprofit organization. There are all the finances and budgets. When we were part of the museum, all of that was done for us. Sometimes, changes are hard.

“We are very happy to have our exhibition at the Galen. There’s 4,000 square feet of display space. This allows us to do much more interesting things and to show more local art. I think it will help invigorate the space and draw a different audience—people who may not attend museum shows. There’s a lot of talent in the local scene. Lots of artists live in this area.”

Radcliffe said it’s important to the artists to have their work shown in a museum setting.

“Metamorphosis is a juried museum show. This sets the bar higher, and we are building on that high quality,” he said. “Our jurors are well-known and respected. You really have to improve your art to get into these shows.

“The Artists Council offers critiques for our members and classes to improve not only the art, but also improve the business side of what they do. The classes and critiques are run by experienced artists. This allows our members a chance to look at things differently.”

The Metamorphosis jurors are Alma Ruiz, a senior fellow at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Los Angeles, and curator of the 2020 Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala City; and Mary Ingebrand-Pohlad, internationally known for her abstract landscape sculptures and member of the Palm Springs Art Museum board of directors.

The new Artists Council board has a bold vision for the council.

“We’re talking about an online gallery with the ability to purchase art online. This would give us a whole new audience,” Radcliffe said. “We’d like to try to have exhibits outside of our area and invite other Southern California artists and even artists from foreign countries to participate. We’d like more opportunities to show our work in other museums.”

Metamorphosis, an exhibit by the Artists Council, will be on display through Friday, April 12, at the Palm Springs Museum of Art in Palm Desert, 72567 Highway 111, in Palm Desert. For more information, visit artistscouncil.com.

More than 80 people came to the Copa Nightclub on Wednesday, Dec. 12, with one goal: to celebrate the people, businesses and organizations that make the Coachella Valley a fantastic place to call home.

The biggest contingents at the party—hosted by Independent editor/publisher Jimmy Boegle, with help from assistant editor Brian Blueskye—came to celebrate Barbara Carpenter, voted Best Real Estate Agent for the second year in a row, and Augustine Casino, which took the top spot in a whopping seven categories.

Below is a gallery of photos from the event, taken by Kevin Fitzgerald. In the media section, find the welcome video from Rep. Raul Ruiz, as well as a video of the event, courtesy of Tantalum Films. (Originally published on Dec. 13; updated with video Jan. 3.)

This whole process started back in August, when voting began in the first round of the fifth annual Best of Coachella Valley readers’ poll.

Now, after three months, two rounds of voting and ballots from more than 1,300 people, we’ve come to the glorious end of the process: Here are the results of the Best of Coachella Valley 2018-2019!

From all of us here at the Independent: A huge, sincere thank you to all of the readers who voted. We realize that this is not an easy ballot to fill out—almost 130 categories is indeed a lot— but because you took the time to do so thoughtfully, the slate of winners and finalists presented here is truly impressive. It’s diverse; it’s valley-wide (even including representation of the high desert); and it shows how truly great the people, places, organizations and businesses are that call the Coachella Valley home.

Now, it’s time to celebrate. Please join us at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Dec. 12, at Copa Nightclub—your selection this year as Best Nightclub—244 E. Amado Road, in Palm Springs, for the Best of Coachella Valley Awards Party. All of the winners present will receive certificates and have an opportunity to say thank you; after that, your Best Local Band selection, Avenida Music, will take the stage and perform. I hope to see you there.

Congratulations to all of the winners and finalists … and welcome to the Best of Coachella Valley 2018-2019!

—Jimmy Boegle, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.